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- Convenors:
-
Nora Wuttke
(Durham University)
Elaine Forde (Durham University)
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- Format:
- Roundtable
- Location:
- Room 212, Teaching & Learning Building (TLB)
- Sessions:
- Thursday 10 April, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
What is heat and how do we study it? With this roundtable, we bring together method and subject matter to discuss heat, its meaning in anthropology and junctions with other disciplines. We welcome panellists from multiple disciplines interested in heat and the study thereof.
Long Abstract:
Heat is illusive. Heat is present or absent. Heat is intimately bound to the human body. The affective experience of heat is relational, and meanings of heat and understandings of it have colonial legacies. Extractivist logics come together with heating, cooling, and burning; and what about their sibling, humidity? Taking “heat” as a landmark, in this roundtable we will discuss critical approaches to heat research, themes and methodologies, and convergences with other disciplines such as social energy research, medical anthropology, art, urban studies, science and technology studies, engineering, to name just a few. The aim is to critically conceptualise heat; how we think, study, and attribute meaning to heat in a heating world.
Accepted contributions:
Session 1 Thursday 10 April, 2025, -Contribution short abstract:
Thermal imaging visualizes heat through distinct signatures to categorize bodies as normal or abnormal. I argue that Lozano-Hemmer’s Thermal Drift subverts this, depicting thermal dispersion and dynamic, shared contagion rather than discrete sources.
Contribution long abstract:
Thermal imaging is a technology that permeates our visual culture in relation to heat and temperature. Originally developed for military purposes, it creates a "visuo-thermal scene" based on the emissivity of bodies within its field. Each body emits a certain level of heat, producing a distinct "thermal signature" that is categorized as either "normal" or "abnormal". In this way, thermography renders heat operational within a social, political, and discursive framework aimed at identifying and managing bodies. This thermal imagery associates intensely hot agents with threats that must be monitored or neutralized. As Nicole Starosielski suggests, thermal images function as vectors of "thermopower" (2021), identifying targets that emit abnormal heat to regulate behavior and limit actions.
However, since every media practice involves a negotiation between the structure of a device and the interacting subject, repeated engagement with technoscientific apparatuses can become "alien" through speculative imaginaries and practices. I argue that this is precisely what Raphael Lozano-Hemmer’s Thermal Drift installation explores. Rather than merely identifying hot bodies against a neutral background, Lozano-Hemmer depicts the dispersion and interpenetration of thermal sources within a material-energetic field. Infrared radiation is represented as quanta, revealing the constant spread of thermal contagion rather than discrete, identifiable sources.
Contribution short abstract:
This provocation documents Douglas HK Lee’s Hot Room experiments (1937-1948), the methods he developed to study tropical heat in interwar Australia, and their contribution to a physiological theory of tropical housing focused on female fatigue.
Contribution long abstract:
From 1937 to 1948, climate physiologist Douglas HK Lee designed and supervised the “Hot Room Experiments” at the University of Queensland (Brisbane, Australia). Seeking to identify and measure “physiological disturbances” caused by heat, the experiments exposed human subjects (male and female, active and sedentary) to tropical temperatures (humid and arid) for varying periods of time. In this provocation I will consider the methods used by Lee to study heat and the motivation for his project. Demonstrating the initial context of Lee’s experiments was the “Tropical Australia Question,” interwar concerns that the Australian tropics were unsuitable for settlement by communities from temperate climates, it will also be argued that the focus of Lee’s work was the tropical acclimatization of wives and mothers exposed to poorly designed homes and towns. Producing quantities of “scientific” data, the experiments also formed the foundations for a physiological (medical) theory of tropical housing focused on tropical fatigue or strain. While Lee’s contribution to tropical housing in Australia has been recognized, his connection to earlier debates on tropical settlement, the acclimatization of women, and tropical fatigue has yet to be considered
Contribution short abstract:
Through ethnographic research in southern Chile's cold climate, I explore how "homely warmth" emerges as both thermal need and cultural metaphor, revealing how care practices transform structurally cold houses into warm homes.
Contribution long abstract:
In southern Chile, where indoor temperatures frequently fall below 16°C during six to eight-month winters, this research examines how the concept of "homely warmth" (calor de hogar) operates as both material reality and cultural metaphor. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, I analyze how residents—particularly women performing unpaid care work—strive to create and maintain "homely warmth" despite structural constraints of poorly insulated housing, a legacy of neoliberal policies.
The research reveals how "homely warmth" embodies a critical junction between physical comfort and social well-being. Women's practices of thermal care—from maintaining wood stoves to creating cozy gathering spaces—demonstrate how warmth is simultaneously negotiated through material interventions and social relations. These practices transform technically cold spaces into socially warm homes through combinations of traditional knowledge, improvised solutions, and careful management of domestic space.
This analysis contributes to understandings of heat by showing how "homely warmth" becomes a site of resistance where care work and material practices converge to create habitable spaces despite thermal precarity. The findings suggest that warmth in domestic spaces cannot be reduced to temperature measurements alone, but must be understood through the intricate ways people craft well-being at the intersection of thermal needs and social meaning.
Contribution short abstract:
This provocation rethinks the relationship between fire risk and heat, exploring how heat functions as both productive and potential energy. By adopting a broader view of heat, I highlight its interconnections with labour, infrastructure and energy, focusing on sites where fire is a chronic risk.
Contribution long abstract:
During the heatwave months of April to June 2024, fire incidents in Delhi more than doubled, with electrical ‘overloading’ cited as a leading cause. This placed immense strain on the city’s fire services, which were also described as being ‘overloaded’ by the rise in emergency calls. In May, two major fires broke out in my field site — in a factory in Bawana Industrial Area and a waste picker settlement in Shahbad Daulatpur. Long term engagement in these sites, however, revealed fire to be chronic risk beyond the heatwave period. It's conditions emanated from more than heat as ambient temperature – they included the concentration of materials and labour processes in space, with heat acting as both productive energy and a potential danger.
Drawing on ethnographic research in the industrial and waste frontiers of North Delhi, this roundtable provocation rethinks the relationship between heat and fire, focusing on the experience of workers who are routinely exposed to both. This includes firefighters, factory workers and waste pickers. By attuning to heat, not only as an environmental factor, but also an essential component and a by-product in production and waste processes, I reflect on its role in structuring fire risk, particularly in areas where physical and social infrastructures are under constant strain. As part of this, I borrow the concept of ‘overloading’ to frame the interconnections between weather, labour, infrastructure and energy, offering a more holistic approach for understanding fire risk in urban environments.
Contribution short abstract:
As global warming intensifies, heat stress threatens EU agriculture. This dissertation of migrant work in Austrian AgTech uses Naders´ "vertical slice" —studying up, down, and through—to explore heat’s material, embodied, and institutional lives.
Contribution long abstract:
As global warming intensifies, heat stress emerges as a critical yet underexplored threat in labor sectors, reaching into European industrial and agricultural landscapes (ILO 2019). Its elusive, hard-to-measure nature and contingent impacts on human bodies make it challenging to study. This paper situates these issues within ethnographic research on migrant workers in a high-tech greenhouse cluster in Eastern Austria, where extreme hot and humid microclimates expose workers to discomfort, sweat, and thermal stress. These exposures are exacerbated by regimented labor regimes and intensifying heatwaves in East Austria.
My research documents heat-related work accidents, from dizziness and fainting to severe injuries. Using Laura Nader’s “vertical slice” concept, I employ heat as a heuristic device to examine actors’ embodied positions within hierarchical power structures. This involves a trifold ethnographic approach: (1) “studying up” heat stress as an object of institutional regulation, exploring its quantification and governance by state actors; (2) “studying down” heat as embodied experiences among greenhouse workers; and (3) “studying through” heat via autoethnographic immersion in greenhouse labor. Through this approach, I am interested in, and contributing to studying the complex social lives of heat as it unfolds along material, embodied, and institutional dimensions.